The present invention generally relates to paintball guns, and more particularly relates to paintball loader and hopper combinations for dispensing uniformly-sized spherical projectiles such as frangible paintballs.
The game of Paintball is one in which two or more teams try to capture each other's flags and the players on each team are armed with compressed gas powered guns that shoot paintballs in the form of gelatin or plastic spherical balls or capsules that contain biodegradable colored liquids. During the game when a player is hit with a paintball from an adversary's gun, the paintball ruptures and leaves a colored mark on the hit player who then must retire from the game.
The operation of paintball games have grown more sophisticated with the use of semi-automatic paintball guns that sequentially fire individual paintballs as fast as the trigger can be repeatably pulled. The increased firing rate of semi-automatic paintball guns have lead to the use of bulk paintball storage hopper devices with paintball feeder mechanisms to meet the high firing rate demands of the game.
Based on existing paintball gun designs the paintball storage hopper includes a housing that is secured on the upper portion of the gun and the housing is shaped to hold a large quantity of paintballs. The base of the housing has an outlet tube through which the paintballs drop by the force of gravity and the outlet tube connects to an inlet tube located on the upper portion of the gun. The inlet tube directs each paintball into a firing chamber of the gun where the paintball is propelled outwardly from the gun under the action of compressed gas from the gas chamber attached to the lower portion of the gun.
The instant invention has reduced to practice a number of high capacity pod hopper and pod loader configurations adapted to be attached to existing designs of paintball egg (core) housings using gravity paintball feed systems and mechanical force feed systems with variable paintball feed such as manufactured by Ricochet. In particular, the instant invention has developed the said gravity feed system with no speed settings attached to Tippmann A5 and A7 guns with permanently attached high capacity pod hopper housings, and so called by the inventor as Hopper Models Nos. 1 and 2 respectively. In these configurations paintball loading is through a cap on the said core egg with combined paintball capacities upwards of 400. In addition, the invention has reduced to practice three further versions incorporating the said mechanical force paintball feed systems, wherein so called Hopper Model Nos. 3 has fixed delivery speed of 15 balls per second with total combined paint capacities dependant on the number of pod housings of upwards of 600 balls, Hopper Model No 4, also identified as “Impact” the same as the said Model No. 3 with a rated ball feed range of between 24 and 35 balls per second and made form high impact plastic, hence the name “Impact”, Hopper Model No. 5, the same as Model No. 4, except with a material change to carbon fiber, and called “Pursuit”. This range of paintball pod hopper or pod loader configurations in addition to further embodiments disclosed in later sections of the specification all in conjunction with paintball feeder core egg capacities provide a range of paintball enhanced capacities that provide the user with significant game advantages and has been given by the inventor the collective name of the “Pinokio” series of paintball high capacity pod hoppers and pod loaders.
The increased paintball firing capability of paintball guns is putting ever increasing demands on the players to quickly re-load the gun to stay in the game, and the purpose of the instant invention is to provide a range of increased capacity loaders that are readily adaptable to existing prior art paintball hoppers.
The instant invention addresses the need for improvements to Paintball Hoppers and Loaders that significantly enhance the player participation in paintball games using semi-automatic paintball guns by adapting existing paintball feeder hoppers.
The instant invention discloses design embodiments wherein the means of attachment between the Paint Ball Feeder Egg and the novel High Capacity Paintball Hopper and Loader housings are in the form of quick connect/disconnect connections, permanent connections, and an integral structure whereby the High Capacity Hopper or Loader housing is integral with the Paintball Feeder Egg.
The High Capacity Hopper and Loader housings of the instant invention offer means to mount a Pod directly to the at the forward and rearward ends of the nose of existing designs of Paintball Feeder Egg structures, by means of a multiplicity of quick release connections, such as bayonet fittings with ⅙ turn, ¼ turn, ½ turn and full turn, and other quick connection means such as screwed, taper screwed, spring-loaded ball bearing, eccentric rod, and other connectors used for example for interchangeable camera lenses connections. In addition the instant invention also discloses permanent mounting means for High Capacity Hopper and Loader housings to mount a Pod directly to the at the forward and rearward ends of the nose of existing designs of Paintball Feeder Egg structures, by methods such as gluing, sonic welding, ring clips, mechanical fasteners, etc.
The range of High Capacity Hopper housings is based upon gravity feed paintball gun systems, and the range of High Capacity Loader is based upon power feed paintball gun systems, wherein both these arrangements provide the paintball gun user with instant availability of upwards of 600 paintballs without re-loading, as compared to the largest current models by any paintball feeder egg capacity by any manufacturer which are no greater than 200 paintballs.